goldilocks

(usually initial capital letter) not being extreme or not varying drastically between extremes, especially between hot and cold: a Goldilocks economy that is neither overheated nor too cold to cause a recession;

1540-50; obsolete goldy golden + lock2 + -s3; from the fairy tale Goldilocks and the Three Bears, in which the golden-haired Goldilocks rejects uncomfortable extremes, as porridge that is too hot or too cold

Goldilocks

name for a person with bright yellow hair, 1540s, from adj. form of gold + lock in the hair sense. The story of the Three Bears first was printed in Robert Southey's miscellany "The Doctor" (1837), but the central figure there was a bad-tempered old woman. Southey did not claim to have invented the story, and older versions have been traced, either involving an old woman or a "silver-haired" girl (though in at least one version it is a fox who enters the house). The identification of the girl as Goldilocks is attested only from c.1875.